Club News Archives - 2006

If you have a club news item to contribute, we would be grateful if you would email it to us... To make room for new stories on the 'Club News' page, all of our stories will eventually move here to the archives but they will stay available here for future reference... 12/12/2006 More from Andrew in Oz... Andrew Cowden has fired through another little update on how he's getting on in Oz. Thanks again go to Andrew's dad, Harry, for passing this little update on. Get the update on his progress here. 23/11/2006 Carrick draw Donemana in Irish Senior Cup... Carrickfergus have been drawn at home to North West side Donemana in the first round of the 2007 Irish Senior Cup. They last met the Co Tyrone side when they travelled to play them in the 2004 Ulster Cup, Carrick losing by 123 runs on that occasion. The match will take place at Middle Road on Saturday 19th May. Full details of the draw are available here. 23/11/2005 News and pictures from Club dinner... The Club's annual dinner was held on Friday 17th November and was the usual sociable occasion, allowing the Club to honour its oustanding achievers of the season past. We now have the photographs from the night available, as well as a full list of prize-winners from the night. Full details on the dinner can be found here. 10/11/2006 News from Challenge Cup draw... The draw for the Down and Newry Democrat Challenge Cup was made today and Carrickfergus C.C. has been drawn against Derriaghy in the Second Round, (Premier League clubs get a bye in the First Round). The full draw can be found here. 31/10/2006 Andrew's Aussie diary... Andrew Cowden has fired through a bit of an update on his first couple of months at the Australian Sports Gateway Academy in Brisbane. Our thanks go to Andrew's dad, Harry, for passing this little update on. See how he's been getting on here and expect further updates as we get them... 26/10/2006 News from the NCU AGM... The Northern Cricket Union AGM was held on Wednesday 25th October and the Club had its full permitted compliment of five delegates in attendance. There were a number of changes made on the night, the most notable of which was that the the motion to increase the number of teams to be promoted and relegated between Sections One and Two was passed by the most slender of margins. Carrick will have to do better than our rather precarious 9th place of the last 3 seasons! Other notable changes were as follows: Clubs may now agree to shorten the duration of rearranged cup matches to a minimum of 30 overs before resorting to a bowl-out. Senior Cup final now a one innings matchfor an experimental 3 year period. 3rd and 4th XI cricket has been reduced from a maximum of 45 to 40 overs. 3rd and 4th XI's will now have 21 rather than 14 days in which to inform Section Secretaries of dates of rearranged matches. Waringstown's proposal to ban overseas professionals was defeated by a comfortable margin, as was a proposal to allow them to play in the Challenge Cup. 18/10/2006 News from the Club AGM... There were few major developments at the Club Annual General Meeting which was held on Tuesday 17th October: The minutes of the previous AGM (18th October 2005) were adopted. The Club accountant, Graeme Ritchie, presented the Financial Report and Statement of Accountants for the year to 31st August 2006 and these were also adopted. The annual reports from the Club Secretary, Treasurer and Club Captains were all considered and adopted. Offices were declared vacant and those in attendance re-elected the previous post-holders back into office in their respective positions The Management Committee was re-elected en masse with the exception of Alex Adams who decided not to stand this year. Ivan Walker was elected to serve on Committee in place of Alex. Ryan Eagleson was re-elected to the post of Club Captain for a sixth term. The full list of Office Bearers and Management Committee members can be found on the Contacts page. 31/08/2006 Congratulations to Ryan on new role... Warmest congratulations are due to Club Captain, Ryan Eagleson who was yesterday appointed as Development Officer for the Northern Cricket Union. Ryan, a qualified ECB Coach, has been a tireless servant to the game locally, remaining loyal to his home team throughout his career. He managed to clock up no fewer than 65 Irish caps in a successful international career as well as, of course, gaining county cricket experience with Derbyshire. The NCU has gained has a talented individual with an extraordinary knowledge of, and enthusiasm for cricket in Ireland as well as a wealth of experience gained from coaching and playing abroad over the past dozen or more seasons. The Club would like to congratulate Ryan on his appointment and wish him every success in his new tenure. 31/08/2006 Carrick win featured in Sunday Life... The First XI's priceless victory over Bangor last Saturday featured in the Sunday Life's cricket roundup in case anyone missed it. Excellent performances from our returning "Carrick-Kiwi" Shane Singe (87) and youngster Matthew Palmer (3 for 38) helped secure the 85 run win which could yet prove vital to Section One survival, leaving Cliftonville requiring three victories from their three remaining matches to have any chance of avoiding relegation. 04/08/2006 U-15's and U-17's both make semi finals... Congatulations to our Under 15's who have reached the semi final stage of the Under 15 league, and to the Under 17's who are into the Colts Cup semi final. The Under 15's, under Luke Orr's captaincy, won all six matches they played in Section 1 of the Under 15 league, and topped the section. They now qualify for the knockout stage of the competition where they will travel to play Section 4 winners Waringstown in the semi final by August 18. The Under 17's, who are captained by Michael Gilmour, have reached the semi final of the Colts Cup, following a walk-over against Portadown and victories over Larne and Derriaghy. They will now meet ether Ballymena, who they beat in the final in 2003 and lost to in 2004, or the winners of Waringstown v Downpatrick, in the semi final at Middle Road during the week ending August 18. 03/08/2006 Matthew Palmer makes Northern Under 14 XI Further congratulations are due to Matthew Palmer who has been selected for the Northern XI to play the Southern XI in the Under 14 Representative Fixture, which will take place at Stormont on Tuesday 15 August, starting at 12 noon. 01/08/2006 Young Carrick players selected for Taverners... Congratulations are due to left arm spinner Matthew Palmer and batsman/ wicketkeeper David Cartmill who have been selected for the Belfast squad to play in this year's Lord's Taverners' Inner Cities Under 14 Cup at Arundel in West Sussex. Palmer, who was bowler of the tournament at last year's competition after taking 6-19 in the final which Belfast won, will captain this year's team. (See past article dated 24/08/05). Belfast have qualified for the national finals for the sixth successive year, following victories over Edinburgh and Glasgow in preliminary round matches, and will join teams representing seven other cities from throughout the UK at Arundel from 7-10 August. 08/06/2006 Snaps from Cliftonville Twenty20 available... Bobby Menaul has sent through a a few more good action shots, this time from the recent Twenty20 win over Cliftonville Cobras. Snaps are available here and many thanks to Bobby again for sending these through. Roger has also pointed out that there is an excellent gallery of shots by John Boomer from Saturday's win over Instonians at the fantastic official NCU site on Cricket Europe. Many thanks go to John for allowing us to link to these photos. 17/05/2006 Snaps from CSNI North match available... Bobby Menaul was kind enough to send through a few good action shots from Saturday's excellent First XI victory over CSNI North. Snaps are available here and many thanks to Bobby for sending these through to us. 25/04/2006 Weekend fixture change... Just a small note of a venue change for those hoping to make it to the opening league match of the season. Saturday's match against North Down (29/04/06) has now been switched to an away fixture with the Comber lads now coming to Middle Road on the reverse fixture date of 8th July. This change to the fixture list has been made in the "Fixtures" page so you can't say you haven't been warned! 12/03/2006 2006 pro named as Abbas Ali... The Club has now announced Abbas Ali as the Club professional for 2006. A talented 30 year-old all-rounder from Madya Praddesh in India, Abbas is a left- hand batsman with a First Class average approaching 50 and a tidy off-spin bowler to boot. He comes from a well-known Indian cricketing family and has played representative cricket for India A and also has experience of playing in England with two seasons in Lancashire under his belt. For those who want further details, Roger has pulled together a comprehensive summary of Abbas' background and career to date, which can be found here. 12/03/2006 Website heads towards 250,000 page views... For the statisticians amongst you, (and let's face it, it is cricket we're talking about here so that is probably just about every visitor!), the Club website is rapidly approaching an important milestone. Within the next 2-3 weeks, we will have clocked up an incredible quarter of a million page views! The counter on the homepage keeps a running total of unique visits (currently over 40,000) but since most of you view more than one page per visit, the page view count is maintained seperately. If you click on the counter below the Club crest or here, you can see more detailed statistics from the independent service we use (Sitemeter) and this reveals that, thanks to your interest in the site, we are within touching distance of serving up our 250,000th page view since the site first appeared around 4 1/2 years ago. I think this is a pretty unbelievable figure and I just thought this would be an appropriate time to say thanks to all our loyal visitors for supporting the site over the last few years. No doubt my partner in crime, Roger (whose contribution to the website has been massive), would echo that! 12/03/2006 Twenty20 and Youth XI fixtures available... Fixtures for the Twenty20 team and all youth XI's are now available on the fixtures page. (See the Cup Fixtures page for the Twenty20 matches). 12/03/2006 2005 League tables summary now available... Sorry folks - this update is long overdue but the league tables section of the website has now been updated to include last season. This section of the site only covers the sections in which Carrickfergus teams have competed over the years but it does provide a handy quick reference to the teams' relative finshing positions in their respective competitions over time. 13/02/2006 Club's Ireland v Endgland tickets sold out... Roger has informed us that the Club's allocation of 15 tickets for the Ireland v England clash in June are now all sold out. Some details on how to obtain tickets are still available in the previous article here. 28/01/2006 New Club merchandise page... Roger has re-ordered stock on Club merchandise in advance of the new season and he suggested we should really have a page on the site detailing what is available for purchase for everyone's information. As a result, we have added a page to the site for this very purpose. At present we have made the link available directly from the home page to piublicise the new stock arrival but, for future reference, the new " Club Merchandise " page is and will remain permanently available from the left menu. Anyone who has ever bought or seen this gear knows that it really is of extremely high quality for the price and we would encourage all members to take make a few purchases and help bolster Club coffers. The new design Club ties, in particular, are well worth a look... 28/01/2006 Tickets for Ireland v England... The ICU have released details regarding ticket availability for Ireland's match against England at Stormont on 13th June. The basic summary is that ICU members and clubs are being given priority access to tickets before general public release. Each club has been allocated 15 tickets and those allocated to Carrickfergus CC will be made available to Club members on a first come, first served basis with a restriction to one per member. Full details on ticket availability through the Club and the ICU have been pulled together by Roger in this document. 28/01/2006 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th XI fixtures available... Fixtures have been announced for all men's teams and are now available on the site on the fixtures page. Twenty20 and youth team fixtures will follow as soon as they are available.